Worldpay new global research reveals how intelligent agents are reshaping how consumers discover, compare and manage what they buy – and what merchants can do to prepare for the industry’s biggest shift since e-commerce.

We surveyed 8,000 consumers across seven countries to understand how ready they are to let AI act on their behalf. The results are clear: Curiosity is high, but trust is the key to adoption.

Visa has enabled live agentic commerce transactions across Europe, letting AI agents complete purchases with participating merchants. The transactions mark a shift from testing within controlled environments to live purchases at participating merchant websites, with agents browsing products, selecting items and initiating payments within parameters set by consumers.

In addition, the transactions are enabled through Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa’s portfolio of initiatives supporting AI-driven commerce. They rely on explicit consumer authorisation, with agents operating within user-defined controls rather than acting independently of the cardholder’s instructions. Visa has worked with more than 30 European card issuers to support these transactions, alongside merchants including lastminute.com, Frasers, Cleverbridge and BrickDepot, spanning the travel, retail and ecommerce sectors.

Square announced a new ChatGPT app and Claude plugin, helping sellers get discovered and transact at the exact moment customers are making purchasing decisions through AI-powered conversations. Square was built to help sellers accept payments where their customers are. This foundation has expanded to helping sellers reach customers across key digital channels, from search and maps to social and marketplaces. As consumers increasingly turn to AI to decide where to eat, shop, and book services, Square is extending this approach to help businesses show up with accurate information and – in supported AI experiences – directly order within these channels.

With the European payments sector undergoing rapid modernisation, critical questions around investment, regulation, and market alignment are dominating the agendas of banks, fintechs, regulators, payments providers, and technology providers. To uncover the practical choices defining today’s market, Finextra Research surveyed 195 industry professionals in April 2026 across Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Belgium. 

Running a business online comes with numerous challenges due to the fast-moving environment , where customer expectations are higher, competition is just a click away, and technology keeps evolving. Still, moving online is clearly worth it.

In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), 73% of people shop online, so if your business isn’t there, you’re missing a large share of customers. The European e-commerce market itself is huge, too, expected to reach €353.5 billion in 2026 and keep growing.

Payments provider Klarna has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered app in OpenAI’s ChatGPT centered around shopping and search. The Klarna Shopping Search app in ChatGPT enables users to describe the types of products they’re looking for and, in one conversation, see visual results with up-to-date prices, availability and offers from multiple merchants, according to the companies. From there, the Klarna Shopping Search app redirects users to the merchant’s site, where those consumers can complete their purchases.

Learn how to increase checkout conversion by reducing friction, simplifying payments, and giving customers a faster, more seamless buying experience. To increase checkout conversion in 2026, you need to remove anything that slows customers down or makes them hesitate at the final step. This matters because the average 2026 checkout conversion rate in Europe is just around 20%. That means that out of 100 people who initiate the checkout process, only 20 actually go through with the purchase , while the rest drop off somewhere along the way.

Digital transactions are expected to increase from $12.3 trillion in 2025 to nearly $17 trillion in 2028, driven by a stronger focus on customer convenience, the expansion of e-commerce, and high levels of smartphone adoption. While this growth is good for businesses, it’s also good for organized, technologically sophisticated criminal groups. 

This playbook explores the current state of fraud, AI-powered security challenges, and the latest tools and strategies companies can use to protect themselves from digital attacks.